Harvesting Honey From A FLOW HIVE & Thoughts & Impressions of the Flow Hive

you you okay so we've got our shelf brackets ready here and we're gonna put on our shelf here all right so we're gonna get ready to harvest some honey here now we're gonna get this ready to get into the lower flow super here and what makes the flow hive really unique is I don't have to break into this hive like I used to and the way you would normally do um I don't have to lift the heavy frames in fact I really don't have to lift any frames at all and as you'll see the honey will simply flow out from the bottom out into jars and none of the heavy lifting disturbing to be squishing bees getting stung this is what makes it really really remarkable here as you'll see I don't have to do any of that I'll be able to harvest the honey right out of the honey super here directly unfiltered unprocessed right into the jars and that's what you're about to see so I've got my little shelf here or I can put my jars and fill them up with honey right out of the hive so let's get to it and start harvesting some honey okay so the first thing is we got to get this ready so we're gonna take off this top little access cover that gives us access to the top part of the frames which we will need to open up and crack the honeycomb inside the flow frames now we're gonna pull this off and yes I'm not sure how well you can see it but there are bees in here and I'm probably gonna be harvesting starting over here this will be one two three four five six I'm gonna be harvesting I think frames one two and three those look to be the more most full and the bees have the most we capped over so to start off with we have to remove the top little cover here little top cover here comes right off the second step is to come down here and remove the little cap here where the flow tube goes in so we remove the little round cap here from the flow tube and these are not able to get in here now now we're going to put in our flow tube into here and you'll notice that the there's like a little lip here that's the end you want to put in the bottom of the full frame and the flow emblem which you should be able to see right here this needs to be on the top this little lip goes in here and kind of seals up a hole right here this is part of their drip back system so we're gonna go ahead and insert this in here alright get a good snug fit now the honey will flow out down and out of the tube into a jar we've got a 12 ounce jar here so this is how it's gonna work okay this is the flow key this is the tool that is included with the flow hive this is what you will be putting in the slot up here to open up the honey cells in this frame and get the honey to start flowing out so that's the next step so let's do that now okay so the end of the flow key goes in the lower slot here this is to open them up and we're just going to put it in maybe a third of the way and we will turn it about ninety degrees down this way that will open up the the cells for the first third of it and the honey should start coming out pretty soon alright I'm seeing some honey coming out down the tube should be able to see that now here it comes there it is first a little bit of mesquite honey coming out and into the jar flowing right into the jar so this honey is not filtered there are maybe some small little pieces of beeswax coming out but it's just beeswax maybe some air bubbles but as you see the honey is flowing right out from the hive here into the jar now as the honey's flowing out these tubes fit in here so nicely with that little lip in that part of their leek back system as they call it there's no honey leaking out here and the bees don't have access to this as yet now there are some things in there mostly air bubbles those will rise to the surface it's about 78 degrees outside right now and so the honey's flowing pretty decently and this hive is tilted about two and a half to three degrees to the rear so you have a downward flow of the honey I got to get another jar ready here okay so that's our fourth jar 12 ounce jar and that's the one thing once you open up these frames you can't shut them off there's no valve or anything at least no one's come up with one yet so you have to make sure you've got plenty of jars to harvest now each one of these frames is supposed to hold it at least two quarts possibly almost two and a half quarts of honey so during a good honey flow you can keep up with the bees and just collect a lot more honey all right now we're gonna push this all the way to the back of it kind of stops and we're gonna open up the rest of the frames in this cell or the cells in this frame you know this will get all the cells in here open I've had an occasional beat wander back here probably because they smell the honey and they just kind of come up buzz me but they're not bothering me now the the bees are coming and going out the front of the hives here and there's four hives in a row here and so when you're harvesting the honey it doesn't seem to disturb the bees too much they're just kind of curious as to what you're doing back here and they can probably smell the honey so they come back here just to investigate but they're not attacking me because I'm taking their honey or anything so here's our honey flowing right out of the hive directly into the jar there's just a lot of small air bubbles an occasional very tiny Fleck of beeswax and by overnight the air bubbles will have risen to the surface you're gonna end up with a jar of really beautiful clear unprocessed unfiltered pure honey and to get honey that is this beautiful and clear without all that extra hard messy work filtering and everything else this is just absolutely amazing all right we still have a little drain of honey coming out of this first floor frame we're gonna go ahead and open up this one and so we're gonna take out the flow key we're gonna insert it in the bottom frame here okay so we're gonna stick this in again about a third of the way in to open up the honeycomb here you all right we're gonna demonstrate how you clothed when you're finished harvesting there's just barely a dribble coming out now but you want to take your floo key out now to harvest it we put it in the lower section here the lower notch now we're going to put it in the upper we're going to press it all the way in - it hits the back and then we just turn it again give a couple of turns it's easier to turn so okay we're done now what we've done is we have if you can imagine all of the little individual honey cells when we opened it to harvest they cracked open like this now the reset so they're closed up again and the bees will go in clean up all the honey put down new beeswax if needed but get them all ready probably within 24 36 hours and once they're cleaned up the bees will go in and start putting more honey and nectar in these cells so and they're already busy cleaning up right now but that's how you close up until the next harvest when you open it up again okay so here's our second tube the honey's already coming out the end of the tube and directly into the jar this is another 12 ounce jar and here you see the honey streaming into the jar this honey is just as the bees have put it into the honeycomb into the flow frame cells the flow frame honeycomb if you will and you should be able to see them there they're right there this is the frame that we first harvested this is the second frame and you should be able to see the bees right there just on the outside of the cell they don't have access to get down into the cell because of the cappings and it's flowing down through the channels created when all the little individual cells in that frame open up and allow the honey to drain to the bottom and then back out the end of the tube right into the jar as you see here so what are my thoughts and impressions about the flow hive first of all the flow hive is pretty much a traditional hive whether it's an eighth frame or 10 frame Langstrom but the uniqueness comes in the way you can harvest your honey I did the traditional honey harvesting for 20 years and that's one of the reasons I quit because of all that hard heavy work heavy lifting breaking into the hives getting stung all of that with the flow hive you don't have to do that you still manage your bees in the traditional way but as far as harvesting your honey as you've seen direct from the hive into the jars and you have some beautiful clean pure honey I think the flow hive is a great way to go and I recommend it highly especially to new beekeepers it really is the way to go so I'm very impressed with the flow hive and that's what got me back into beekeeping again after an absence of ten years so thanks for watching and happy beekeeping

Channel: HONIG TRAIL APIARY

Views: 753,025

Rating: 4.8635478 out of 5

Keywords: beekeeping, flow hive, flowhive, honey, honey harvesting, honey from a flow hive, Flow, begining beekeeping, Flow Hive Review, Flow Hive Honey harvesting review, how to harvest honey from a flow hive, flow hive review, review of the flow hive, apiary, pure raw honey

Id: _XyG-0eeds8

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019